Confronting Disposession: Indigeneity, Class and Gender in Oaxaca's Anti-Mining Movement

• In Event: 420 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Paper Session. Gender, Sexualities and Emerging Social Movements (co-sponsored with the LGBTQ Caucus)

Abstract

This paper examines the involvement of rural men and women in southern Mexico in the new social movement against large-scale mining projects. Using participatory action research, ethnography and in-depth semi-structured interviews, my fieldwork will study anti-mining organizations in two regions of Oaxaca state: one with an active mine that has encountered strong local resistance, and one where activists have begun to mobilize to prevent the arrival of mines.
The project has three basic empirical goals. First, I seek to understand how the consciousness of movement participants, and the meaning they derive from their involvement, varies by gender, ethnicity, class, region, and by prior activism. Second, I consider how the roles of movement participants within their organizations vary across region and by gender, ethnicity, and class. Finally, the project will compare regional differences in the strategic activities and outcomes of anti-mine activism in Oaxaca’s Central Valley (with a higher portion of active mines but less history of activism), and its Isthmus of Tehuantepec (where mining is less established, but indigenous activism has flourished for decades around other issues).

Author

• Alessandro Morosin, UC Riverside